With Ottawa confirming last week that it will impose its backstop price on carbon after the Jason Kenney government moved to eliminate Alberta’s carbon levy, fossil-friendly pundits are working to frame climate and carbon as a winning issue for Conservatives in this fall’s federal election.

Presenting their decision as rooted in a responsibility to protect state waters from pollution, New York State regulators have rejected a contentious US$1-billion dollar natural gas pipeline that would have linked their state to the gas fields of Pennsylvania.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) squandered valuable time debating procedure and process when it could have been working to decarbonize the global shipping industry, appalled members of the Clean Shipping Coalition concluded after the agency wrapped up a meeting of its Marine Environment Protection Committee in London, UK last week.

The former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the country’s nuclear industry should be banned, after concluding that the dangers of climate change no longer outweigh the risk of catastrophic reactor accidents.

Politicians and environmental groups are raising the alarm about political interference after unelected Canadian senators voted down one environmental protection bill in committee and adopted hundreds of amendments to a second one, after both had been passed by the elected House of Commons.

Part of Jason Kenney’s “pushback strategy” is a C$2.5-million public inquiry into “the foreign source of funds behind the campaign to landlock Alberta energy.” Another is a $30-million-per-year “energy war room” that will “tell the truth assertively,” presumably tweet for tweet. Kenney has said in speeches and press releases that his pushback strategy is based upon VIvian Krause’s work. What if she’s wrong? – An investigative report by Markham Hislop

The “bomb cyclone”-driven flooding across the midwestern United States has become the latest in a litany of arguments against construction of the US$8-billion Keystone XL pipeline, with a Nebraska farmer, former oilfield worker, and avowed Republican pointing out that the rising waters could have triggered a spill on his property if the pipeline had been in place.

A concerted, well-supported effort by the world’s farmers to restore and protect soil health could reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide by as much as 65 parts per million (ppm) from the current, alarming level of more than 413 ppm, participants heard during an April 10 carbon farming webinar hosted by Washington, DC-based Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2).

Canada is likely to re-approve the controversial Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, but a resurrection of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline plan is not in the cards, according to two separate news reports this week.

After a relentless push by the fossil lobby and others in the natural resource sector, Conservative and Independent members of the Senate Energy Committee are proposing hundreds of changes to Bill C-69, the proposed federal Impact Assessment Act.

Rural municipalities in Alberta are out more than C$81 million in tax revenue from oil and gas companies, and deadbeat fossils are also asking landowners, mostly farmers, to let them skimp on lease payments on the properties their oil and gas rigs occupy, according to a follow-up news report on Trident Exploration’s decision last week to shut down operations and abandon 4,700 gas wells.

With national elections in Canada just 5½ months away, three different coalitions are out with non-partisan campaign platforms aimed at propelling all the federal parties toward faster, more ambitious action on climate change.

There’s an unexpected good reason for the U.S. government to extend its solar energy tax credit through 2024, according to a new briefing note by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis: It’s an essential support for coal communities making the transition to cleaner, less expensive, low-carbon energy.

A bankrupt Canadian fossil is walking away from 4,700 abandoned natural gas wells and an estimated C$329 million in clean-up costs, according to a report last week by the industry-funded Alberta Energy Regulator (AER).

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is vowing a Supreme Court appeal after his province’s Court of Appeal ruled Friday that a federal carbon tax imposed on the province is constitutional and falls within Ottawa’s authority.

With Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance due to report this spring, and a recent national climate assessment showing the country warming at twice the global rate, two community investment strategists say it’s time to catch up with other jurisdictions in requiring companies to disclose their climate-related investment risk.

The Texas state legislature is considering a bill that could make peaceful efforts to hinder pipeline construction a crime on par with second-degree murder, an escalation of penalty which observers say violates constitutional protections on the rights to protest, and to protection from undue punishment.

In a precedent-setting case that corporate polluters will be watching closely, fishers in India’s westernmost state of Gujarat have taken their plea for reparations against the financier of a massive coal plant to the U.S. Supreme Court—which recently ruled in their favour.

Carbon taxes are an efficient way to reduce energy use and related carbon pollution in homes and businesses, fostering greater innovation and adoption of clean energy technologies, Canada’s non-partisan National Energy Board (NEB) concludes in a report issued last week.

Four Canadian cities have stepped up their action on climate change in the last week, with Ottawa and Burlington, Ontario declaring a climate emergency, Toronto considering climate liability action against major fossil polluters, and Victoria endorsing free transit across B.C.’s Capital Regional District.

The Trump administration is acknowledging at least a temporary defeat in its effort to open 128 million acres (51.8 million hectares) of Arctic and Atlantic Ocean waters to oil and gas drilling, announcing Thursday that it will delay release of the plan until after the 2020 U.S. election.

Quebec’s “climate spring” is a cascading grassroot trend that the province’s “powers that be” ignore at their peril, argues Karine Péloffy, legal counsel for the Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement (CQDE), in a recent post for iPolitics.

Australia’s mammoth coal plants failed while its wind and rooftop solar installations shone during a major January heat wave in Victoria state, according to a report last week by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

Carbon pollution from four major tar sands/oil sands mines in northern Alberta is 64% higher than their owners reported using the United Nations’ standard emissions measurement framework, according to a study released this morning in the journal Nature Communications.

News commentary in the wake of the United Conservative Party’s decisive election win in Alberta last week is skewing in two equal and opposite directions, with some stories pointing toward a more moderate, somewhat middle ground for UCP leader Jason Kenney, while the climate groups he spent much of the campaign vilifying prepare for the worst.

India’s ambitions to have electric vehicles meet 30% of the country’s transportation needs by 2030 could save the country an estimated US$2.5 billion, according to a report co-authored by government policy think tank Niti Aayog (the National Institution for Transforming India) and the Snowmass, Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute.

I was on Vancouver Island this August. The haze that dimmed noon to dusk and that drove air quality off scale—the worst on the planet for a time—was a shock, as it must have been for many. I have been working on and around climate change for a good while, mostly in the global South, but this summer I had it in my face and in my lungs.

Canada will face a “flood of litigation” if the Trudeau government’s proposed Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69, is watered down, four First Nations chiefs from the Alberta tar sands/oil sands region warned last week in testimony to a travelling Senate committee.

Falling technology costs and expanding markets will send global wind capacity soaring by 50% over the next five years, according to an annual report by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).

Canada’s National Building Code is undergoing a major rewrite in a bid to avert C$300 billion in climate change-driven infrastructure failures over the next decade, according to high-level federal briefing notes reviewed by CBC News.

All new cars and light-duty trucks sold in British Columbia by 2040 will have to be zero-emission vehicles under legislation tabled Wednesday by Energy Minister Michelle Mungall.

The cost of cleaning up Alberta’s old and unproductive oil wells could max out at C$70 billion, according to a new report by a consortium of landowners and scientists that used data from the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) to come up with its estimate.

When a cloud of toxic chemicals began wafting toward the First Nations hamlet of Fort McKay from Syncrude Canada’s Mildred Lake tar sands/oil sands plant 10 kilometres away, it took officials 12 hours to notify the community—a massive health and safety failure that critics blame on the fossil industry’s takeover of regulatory oversight in the Alberta oilpatch.

Pipeline opponents were back in U.S. federal court last Friday, contending that Donald Trump acted illegally when he issued a new permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in defiance of a previous court order.

Canada still isn’t on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets or phase out fossil fuel subsidies, federal Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand warned last week, in the last report she will issue before her five-year term expires.

Chevron Canada has asked the National Energy Board to nearly double the size of its proposed Kitimat LNG facility, seeking a 40-year licence to export up to 28.23 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year, just days before B.C. Premier John Horgan affirmed that the fiscal framework for another LNG megaproject has fallen into place.

The federal government has spent more than year considering an emergency warning from scientists that pits endangered steelhead trout, and their importance to the Coldwater Indian Band in southern interior British Columbia, against Ottawa’s determination to push ahead with construction of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

U.S. politicians are making another attempt to introduce a tax credit for investments in batteries and other energy storage systems, and may extend the life of existing solar and wind credits, thanks in part to new momentum created by the Green New Deal resolution introduced earlier this year by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).

The federal government’s embattled Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69, would actually deliver more credible project decisions, better consideration of economic factors, and more timely, effective consultations than its Harper-era predecessor, despite the relentless battering it has received from the Canadian fossil lobby, veteran impact assessment specialist Robert B. Gibson writes in a post for Policy Options.

A U.S. federal judge in Alaska put 128 million acres (51.8 million hectares) of Arctic and Atlantic Ocean waters off limits for oil and gas exploration in a ruling late Friday, declaring Donald Trump acted illegally by attempting to revoke an Obama-era ban on drilling in the sensitive ecosystems.

Two major oil pipelines between Canada and the United States are running into renewed legal hurdles, with Donald Trump making what appears to be a futile bid to reissue a presidential permit for the Keystone XL project and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer halting construction on an underwater tunnel for the Line 5 line.

ExxonMobil is running into some second-guessing from analysts after bringing 3.2 billion barrels of tar sands/oil sands crude back into its active reserves.

Electric bikes place #69 on Drawdown’s list of climate solutions. They can eliminate 0.96 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 at a cost of $US106.8 billion, with net savings of $226.1 billion.

Climate policy in Ontario is in a “frightening” state, Environment Commissioner Dianne Saxe warned Wednesday, in the final report her office will issue before it is closed down by the provincial government of Doug Ford.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) voted unanimously Tuesday to quash all remaining petitions against Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline and grant it final approval, setting the company up to complete final regulatory steps for the controversial project by the end of 2019.

Toronto will look into the costs it will incur as a result of climate change and whether a climate accountability lawsuit against fossil producers is worth pursuing if city council adopts a motion being introduced this week by Councillor Mike Layton.

British Columbia has introduced tax changes that confirm billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies for liquefied natural gas (LNG) development.

The world’s biggest reinsurer, Munich Re, is warning that climate change may soon turn rising insurance costs into a pressing social issue, as more frequent, severe weather puts rates beyond the reach of most households.

British Columbia has launched an environmental review for a new, C$150-million marine terminal to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a 48-year-old FortisBC plant on Tilbury Island, in the south arm of the Fraser River.

A strange, new tone is emerging in the day-to-day news chatter about Canada’s oil and gas sector: after years of blaming regulatory rules and a lack of pipeline capacity for the industry’s financial woes, a couple of analysts close to the Alberta oilpatch are acknowledging some of the bigger issues at play.

A federal judge in Wyoming has disallowed oil and gas drilling leases on more than 330,000 acres (133,500 hectares) of federal land after determining the Trump administration gave inadequate consideration to the climate impacts of the authorization.

British Columbia has the right to pass environmental laws to mitigate the harm that could result from the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, but it isn’t trying to stop the project outright, provincial lawyer Joseph Arvay told the B.C. Court of Appeal earlier this week.

TransCanada Corporation’s $8-billion Keystone XL pipeline faces another year of delay after a U.S. appeal court denied its “urgent” motion, backed by Donald Trump’s state department, to lift an injunction blocking pre-construction activities.

British Columbia now has more than 10,000 inactive oil and gas wells, and the cost of cleaning them up stands at C$3 billion and rising, according to a new report by the provincial auditor general that also tracked a seven-fold increase in “orphan” wells whose owners are bankrupt, insolvent, or can’t be found.

Volkswagen announced plans last week to build 22 million new electric vehicles in the next decade, boost the number of new EV models it introduces from 50 to 70 by 2028, and cut 5,000 to 7,000 jobs by attrition by 2023, just a day before the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) filed suit against the company for allegedly defrauding investors in the Dieselgate scandal.

Even if Canadian fossils are intent on obstructing even the most basic national response to climate change, the least they could do is get behind methane emission reductions that cost them less than C$10 per tonne and deliver $9 billion in economic benefits, Environmental Defence climate program manager Dale Marshall argues this week in The Hill Times.

The 123-year-old National Association of Manufacturers is emerging as one of the staunchest defenders of the U.S. oil and gas industry as it battles a cascade of litigation based on climate change and its impacts.

In a reversal of the way business is usually done in Washington, DC, the Trump administration is lobbying U.S. automakers—not the other way around—to support an extreme regulatory rollback that would freeze vehicle fuel efficiency standards at their present level.

Climate deregulation by the Trump administration could increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by more than 200 megatonnes per year by 2025, enough to “hobble global efforts to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” Reuters reports.

The UK government must take climate science and other scientific findings into account in setting national policies on oil and gas fracking, following a ruling of the High Court of England and Wales that represents a major win for advocacy group Talk Fracking.

U.S. fossils are rumbling about a threat to hundreds of thousands of jobs after the transport and energy committee of the Colorado state senate voted 4-3 to refocus the state’s oil and gas regulations on health and safety.

British Columbia municipalities campaigning to have oil, gas, and coal companies cover their fair share of the cost of local climate impacts celebrated a milestone last week, when the City of Courtenay became the twentieth community to send accountability letters to 20 major fossils, West Coast Environmental Law reports.

Canada’s proposed Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69, is “poised for major Senate surgery” as time runs out for passage of a final bill before Parliament shuts down for the federal election this fall.

Turkey’s highest administrative court has blocked a major coal power plant on the Black Sea coast, in a victory for campaigners.
The Council of State ruled February 21 that Hema Elektrik’s environmental impact assessment for the 1,320-megawatt project in Amasra district, Bartin province, was inadequate.

South Dakota’s Republican-dominated legislature has adopted two bills aimed at recovering costs from demonstrators who oppose construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline through the state.

The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has ordered Calgary-based Vesta Energy Ltd. to suspend fracking activities at one of its drilling sites after a 4.6 magnitude earthquake hit central Alberta early Monday morning.

In an analysis for The Energy Mix, award-winning investigative journalist Paul McKay traces the parallels between the SNC-Lavalin scandal that has transfixed Canada’s capital and the Trudeau government’s decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline in spite of its avowed commitment to climate action. “As nature abhors a vacuum,” he writes, “democracy abhors a stacked legal deck.”

Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. has announced a one-year delay in completing its controversial Line 3 pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin, less than a month after newly-elected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz pledged to appeal the project’s regulatory approval in his state.

Five environmental groups represented by Ecojustice were in court last week, trying to stop the Canada-Newfoundland Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB) from extending an offshore drilling licence for the Old Harry prospect, near the marine border between Newfoundland and Quebec.

Colossal fossil ExxonMobil is turning to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to dodge its own shareholders’ resolution calling on management to set and disclose targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Mi’kmaq protesting a controversial project to transform underground salt caverns near Halifax into natural gas storage tanks say a recent court injunction forbidding further protests at the project site, purportedly in the name of public safety, is nothing more than a deliberate act of corporate intimidation.

Though Donald Trump’s tariffs on solar panels has produced rough weather for solar jobs in the U.S. since their imposition in late January 2018, capping a two-year period that saw 18,000 jobs lost, the Solar Foundation’s latest report offers a cautious forecast for clearer skies and a rebounding industry in 2019.

Canada’s National Energy Board is recommending federal cabinet re-approval of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion despite its likely “significant” environmental and climate impacts, prompting multiple Indigenous and environmental opponents to vow the project will never be completed.

Saskatchewan’s long-shot effort to defeat the federal government’s floor price on carbon has turned into a venue for one intervenor to argue for Canada’s obligation to protect future generations from the impacts of climate change.

The National Energy Board (NEB) has turned down Stand.earth’s request that it undertake a review of the climate impacts of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, as it did for the equally contentious Energy East pipeline in 2017.

Royal Dutch Shell moved last week to shore up its position in the transition off carbon by buying German energy storage start-up Sonnen GmbH, while simultaneously facing legal jeopardy for its past and present behaviour as one of the world’s biggest fossils.

Construction of the contentious Coastal GasLink pipeline was suspended late last week after members of the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation found two Indigenous artifacts on the site where the company is currently building a work camp near Houston, British Columbia.

Inconsistent science has marred the credibility of dozens of past environmental impact studies of the Alberta tar sands/oil sands, according to a new assessment published in the journal Environmental Reviews.

Net-zero buildings that produce as much energy as they consume may be about to hit the mainstream in California, where most new homes and multi-residential structures up to three stories high will be equipped with rooftop solar panels beginning next year.

The Doug Ford government in Ontario is introducing a carbon tax on large emitters that exceed a yet-to-be-established provincial standard, after launching a lawsuit against the federal floor price on carbon and deliberately gutting the province’s most affordable pathways to a sustainable economy.

Lenders are paying attention to the recent Supreme Court decision holding bankrupt fossils responsible for cleaning up the production sites they abandon. The result may be tougher loan terms for new oil and gas projects.

Alberta’s plan to boost the price Canadian heavy crude by eliminating a glut via mandatory production curtailments has created an unintended consequence that has some fossils crying foul: It’s driven prices high enough to make it tougher for producers to ship oil by rail.

A retired lawyer from Vancouver is risking a 28-day prison sentence to test the necessity defence as a legal strategy to block fossil projects that would drive up the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

Canadian taxpayers will be on the hook for another $2-billion fossil fuel subsidy if the National Energy Board accepts the latest request from the federal Crown corporation that now operates the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, economist Robyn Allan reports in a National Observer exposé.

In what’s being hailed as a landmark ruling, the Land and Environment Court in New South Wales, Australia has listed climate change as one of the reasons to reject construction of a new open-cut coal mine.

The 21 youth plaintiffs in the landmark Juliana v. United States are asking a judge for a temporary injunction against new fossil fuel leases or development until their case, which has been subject to multiple delays by the Trump administration, can be settled.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) released an outline of the Democrats’ Green New Deal yesterday, in the form of a 14-page Congressional resolution that would bring U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in 10 years by “dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources”.

The Trump administration’s decision to rescind new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs will cost consumers at least US$12 billion per year by 2025, while increasing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 34 million tonnes and annual electricity use by 80 billion kilowatt-hours in that year, according to an analysis released this week by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

Two U.S. natural gas pipelines, the Atlantic Coast line from West Virginia to North Carolina and the Mountain Valley line from West Virginia to Virginia, have both fallen behind schedule and run over budget, partly due to fierce legal opposition on environmental grounds.

A Supreme Court of Canada ruling that holds bankrupt fossils responsible for cleaning up their abandoned oil and gas wells will produce lasting impacts across western Canada, but may not completely address the massive environmental liabilities the companies leave behind, according to initial reporting and analysis of the decision.

China’s ambitious plans to prevent climate-wrecking methane from slipping out of its coal mines and into the atmosphere have so far proven ineffectual, according to a study of satellite data recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

TransCanada Corporation is trying to sell off a majority share of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, the controversial, C$6.2-billion project that has faced sustained opposition from Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in northwestern British Columbia.

Federally-owned Trans Mountain Corporation’s “amateur hour” work on the Stewart Creek river crossing in Chilliwack, British Columbia has destroyed habitat and will reduce food sources for coho and chum salmon that are part of the diet of the endangered southern resident killer whale pod off the west coast.

With the National Energy Board set to report February 22 on the marine impacts of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi said last week the government won’t take any shortcuts in its review of the project—even though he understands how badly Alberta oil and gas workers want to get construction under way.

With the Donald Trump administration racing to deregulate the fossil industry and encourage oil and gas drilling off America’s coasts, Californians stopped on January 28 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Santa Barbara oil spill—the worst disaster of its kind to that date, and one of a handful of ecological disasters that launched the modern U.S. environmental movement.

Construction crews working on the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline are bulldozing traplines in Wetsu’we’ten territory in northeastern British Columbia, the community is warning, in violation of the Wildlife Act and in spite of an agreement between hereditary chiefs and the RCMP that called for no interference with traplines or other traditional practices.

Government support for six new tar sands/oil sands pipelines and four major liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, along with assorted tax cuts and regulatory breaks, led the wish list the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) released Tuesday in advance of the provincial election coming up in Alberta this spring.

Electric utilities in the United States understood the risks of climate change five decades ago, but still positioned themselves as epic greenhouse gas emitters, according to a report last week by the San Francisco-based Energy and Policy Institute.

Canada needs a three-year plan to mandate better disclosure of climate-related risks in corporations’ annual reports, Ottawa-based cleantech analyst Céline Bak concludes in a study released last week by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

Two ExxonMobil public relations officials recently masqueraded as journalists in hopes of gathering information from a Colorado lawyer involved in a lawsuit against the colossal fossil for climate-related damages.

New fossil projects like the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will make it far tougher to meet the 1.5°C global warming target that is essential for averting the worst effects of climate change, a Canadian climate scientist told the National Energy Board this week.

The Steelhead LNG liquefied natural gas project is studying a pipeline route from Chetwynd, in northeastern British Columbia, to the Kwispaa LNG facility it plans to build on Vancouver Island.

Victoria has become the first city in British Columbia to support a class action lawsuit calling on fossil companies to cover their fair share of the costs municipalities will incur as a result of climate change.

The federal government will almost certainly retain ownership of the Trans Mountain Pipeline beyond this year’s federal election, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi said in separate media interviews earlier this week, even with a group of First Nations expressing strong interest in bidding for the troubled project.

A singular focus on pipeline politics and carbon pricing may be distracting from all the other steps Canada must also take to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions—but oil and gas isn’t the only focus for groups working against climate change, and no one is trying to single out or target just one Canadian province, writes Joshua Buck, Alberta climate program manager for Environmental Defence.

Fishing operators in Newfoundland and Labrador are urging a federal-provincial regulator to stop seismic testing by oil and gas companies off Canada’s east coast, after new federal research revealed a 50% drop in plankton populations over the last five years.

Tens of billions of dollars in liabilities from California’s devastating wildfires drove the state’s biggest power utility toward insolvency this week, as Pacific Gas & Electric announced it intended to declare bankruptcy. The decision could affect billions of dollars in utility programs to cut carbon and shift toward energy efficiency, electric vehicles, and renewables.

UK Energy Minister Claire Perry has rebuffed a major fossil company’s demand for less stringent earthquake protection rules for its controversial fracking operations in the northwestern county of Lancashire.

Two separate news outlets are declaring the end of pipeline investment in Canada, while several focus in on the differences in jurisdiction between elected and hereditary First Nations chiefs, in the wake of last week’s RCMP raid and subsequent “peaceful resolution” of the Unist’ot’en blockade along TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline in British Columbia.

Members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation blocking access to TransCanada’s hotly-contested Coastal GasLink pipeline construction site have agreed to allow the company’s workers access through the Unist’ot’en protest camp near Houston, British Columbia, after the Nation’s five hereditary chiefs negotiated a deal to prevent a second RCMP raid on their territory.

California’s biggest power utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), may be on its way to bankruptcy court as it faces billions of dollars in costs and multiple lawsuits for the role its equipment may have played in several massive wildfires in the northern part of the state.

The town council in Scarborough, a resort community on England’s North Sea, has declared a climate emergency as a first step in taking action against global warming.

2018 was the year when the climate liability trend became a wave, with actions from New York City to France to the Philippines and Colombia putting the fossil industry under pressure to take responsibility for the climate impacts of its product.

TransCanada Corporation is hoping to start construction on the Keystone XL pipeline in June, with the aim of bringing it online in early 2021.

Negotiations were under way between RCMP and hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation Tuesday night, aimed at finding a “peaceful solution” to a standoff that led to 14 arrests when police dismantled the first of two checkpoints set up to stop TransCanada Corporation’s Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline.

ExxonMobil will have to hand over 40 years’ worth of documents that could shed light on whether it intentionally withheld information on the impacts its products have on climate change, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear its final appeal of a demand from the state of Massachusetts.

A wave of municipal opposition, on the heels of falling natural gas prices, is raising serious questions about the future of hydraulic fracturing in the United Kingdom, just days after the company with the most extensive exploration rights in the country warned that it won’t proceed unless regulations to protect communities from fracking-related earthquakes are eased.

A regulatory body in Maryland has unanimously rejected Calgary-based TransCanada Corporation’s bid to build a natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to West Virginia across the western part of the state.

A petition protesting France’s failure to honour its commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement has collected nearly two million signatures in one week, making it the country’s most popular sign-on ever—far exceeding the tally for the country’s well-publicized gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement, at just over a million.

Victoria, British Columbia is stepping into the spotlight as one of the 16 municipalities across the province asking fossil producers to cover their share of the cost of the climate impacts communities can expect to encounter in this century.

One of Canada’s leading climate economists and modelers is out with a Globe and Mail opinion piece that questions the decades-old narrative that positions carbon pricing as the cornerstone for effective climate policy.

Recognition of the loss and damage vulnerable countries face due to the inevitable impacts of climate change is emerging as a major success story in the aftermath of this year’s United Nations climate change conference in Katowice, Poland.

Several Alberta fossils are boycotting a CIBC investor conference in Whistler, British Columbia, and the bank is considering moving its annual event elsewhere, after Mayor Jack Crompton asked Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. to commit to pay for its “fair share of the costs of climate change being experienced” by the weather-dependent ski resort town.

The General Court of the European Union has upheld the cities of Paris, Brussels, and Madrid in a challenge to what they see as excessively high emissions standards set by the European Commission in the wake of the Dieselgate standard, with C40 Cities hailing the decision as a “huge legal win”.

The Doug Ford government is receiving failing grades for the scantly-detailed climate plan released late last month by Environment Minister Rod Phillips, while a former senior official argues a strong business case for the Office of the Environmental Commissioner (OCE) after Team Ford decided to shut the office down.

The U.S. State Department is undertaking a new review of the Keystone XL pipeline, virtually dashing TransCanada Corporation’s hopes of beginning construction on the US$8-billion megaproject in February.

The Squamish Nation in British Columbia is signing a C$1.1-billion impact benefit agreement with the Woodfibre LNG liquefied natural project, following what the Squamish Chief describes as a “tight 8-6 decision” in favour of the deal.

British Columbia is intervening in two separate court cases launched by Saskatchewan and Ontario, both aiming to undercut federal authority to establish a floor price on carbon pollution.

The National Energy Board’s “redo” of its failed review of the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is taking on the same look and feel as the process that drove the Federal Court of Appeal to shut down construction on the controversial project, writes attorney Eugene Kung argues in a post for National Observer.

Nearly two weeks after Husky Energy’s SeaRose offshore oil platform spilled 250,000 litres of crude oil into the Atlantic Ocean, about 350 kilometres off St. John’s, Newfoundland, the company still can’t guarantee that more oil won’t leak out—and biologists say the worst may still be ahead for nearby bird species.

A group of five youth and young adults led by Montreal-based ENvironnement JEUnesse (ENJEU) has applied to the Superior Court of Québec for leave to launch a class action lawsuit against the Canadian government, challenging the country’s limited response to climate change on behalf of all Quebeckers aged 35 and under.

A Supreme Court decision earlier this month could open the door for a more unified approach to sustainable finance and low-carbon growth, by allowing Canada to set up a single, national regulator for publicly-traded securities.

Enbridge’s controversial plan to replace the aging Line 5 pipeline with a US$500-million tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac between Michigan and Ontario is running into severe deadline pressure that could set it up for years of legal and regulatory delays, as Governor Rick Snyder prepares to step aside for a new administration.

In the wake of the “gut punch” of a report last month by World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) that confirmed a shocking acceleration in the rate of wildlife extinction globally since 1970, veteran meteorologist and Grist climate columnist Eric Holthaus is arguing that legislation has been—and needs urgently to remain—a powerful shield for the Earth’s non-human inhabitants.

Indigenous opposition has put at least a temporary hold on a TransCanada Corporation gas pipeline from Texas to central and western Mexico, just a couple of years after the Calgary-based pipeliner made it clear it planned to expand its operations in Mexico in the face of regulatory action and community pushback at home.

The journal Nature is carrying excerpts of a speech by the president of the American Petroleum Institute (API), warning that “time is running out” to “save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution”—as of 1965. “This report unquestionably will fan emotions, raise fears, and bring demand for action,” Frank Ikard told an oil industry conference, referring to Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, a report by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee. “The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is […]

A new analysis is pointing toward monumental shifts in U.S. electricity generation markets, with renewable energy and energy storage becoming the “default choice” in regions that were previously dependent on natural gas.

The United States Coast Guard is demanding an end to a 14-year oil spill that has dumped as much as 3.5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico since 2004, putting it on track to surpass the Deepwater Horizon disaster as the country’s worst spill ever.

Newfoundland and Labrador has no hope of cleaning up from its worst-ever oil spill, after stormy waters off the east coast broke up at least two ocean oil sheens to the point that 250,000 litres of toxic material can no longer be recovered.

The Climate Vulnerable Forum completed the world’s first-ever zero-emissions climate summit this week, a day-long virtual meeting that challenged the inevitably more carbon-intensive COP 24 in Katowice, Poland to usher in tougher national climate targets and make climate financing more available to vulnerable countries.

Oil and gas operations off Newfoundland and Labrador were shut down over the weekend after stormy weather made it impossible for Husky Energy to contain a 250,000-litre (1,575-barrel) crude oil spill, the worst in the region’s history, about 350 kilometres off the coast.

With world oil prices heading toward another crash, the swashbuckling free marketeers in Canada’s oilpatch are doing exactly what you would expect: amping up the pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to somehow, magically solve a complex cluster of problems that is ultimately beyond Canadian governments’ control. By Mitchell Beer

The biggest commercial fishing association on the U.S. west coast filed a lawsuit last week against 30 major fossil companies, including Calgary-based Encana Corporation, in a bid to hold them accountable for “significant economic losses” due to ocean warming off California and Oregon.

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will trigger additional greenhouse gas emissions worth C$2.1 to $8.7 billion per year up front, and $675 million to $4.1 billion per year for as long as it operates, based on a social cost of carbon between $45 and $270 per tonne, environmental journalist Stephen Leahy calculated earlier this year in a post for Vice Motherboard.

The business writers at The Economist are paying attention to an inquiry launched by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, aimed at determining for the first time whether the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters have violated basic human rights by causing climate change.

The Doug Ford government tabled legislation yesterday to eliminate the Office of the Environmental Commissioner (OEC), an independent watchdog accountable to the provincial legislature, as part of a fall fiscal update ironically titled “A Plan for the People”.

With Democrats poised to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the new year, 350.org has launched a petition urging the newly-empowered legislators to investigate ExxonMobil, the country’s biggest fossil company, “for misleading the public and wrecking the climate.”

The European Union has adopted new energy efficiency and renewable energy targets that could actually overshoot the continent’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, after accounting for slower economic growth due to Brexit.

Canada may be preparing to mass-produce thousands of small, modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), based on a technology roadmap coordinated by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and released last week, according to an exposé on The Tyee.

“As we were leaving Tacloban it reminded me of the scene from the Hunger Games. I thought: I never want to come back to this living hell again.”

In what InsideClimate News is calling a “striking victory for environmental advocates” who’ve spent more than a decade fighting the project, a federal judge in Montana has ordered an immediate construction halt on the Keystone XL pipeline, after concluding the Trump administration failed to justify its executive order to restart the intensely controversial project.

With a new fossil lobby group, Suits and Boots, urging Conservative senators to slow down passage of the Trudeau government’s new Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69, climate and energy advocates are gearing up their defence of a bill aimed at restoring some of the environmental protections that were gutted by the previous Harper regime.

There’s a massive gap in Canadian climate strategy that is big enough and serious enough to undercut every other effort to turn the country from a climate laggard to a climate leader: Without a fast, determined effort to phase out natural gas, Canada will not meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement, much less deliver on the increased ambition at the heart of the global accord.

British Columbia is giving away C$1 billion per year in fossil fuel subsidies, including generous incentives for LNG Canada’s new $40-billion liquefied natural gas megaproject, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) and Citizens’ Climate Lobby B.C. assert in a release issued earlier this week.

The task force looking into a just transition for workers affected by Canada’s 2030 coal phaseout is asking the federal government to expand its five-year, C$35-million to cover job training and other services, National Observer reports.

They haven’t even had a full court hearing yet, but the 21 youth behind a climate justice case against the United States government are already racking up an impressive record of wins before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On Friday, both benches rejected the Trump administration’s latest attempt to kill the landmark case before it could go to trial.

A “flawed system” of industrial oversight has left Alberta with a staggering C$260 billion in estimated liabilities for abandoned oil and gas facilities, more than four times higher than the figure previously disclosed in public documents from the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), National Observer reports, based on a joint news investigation with Global News, the Toronto Star, and StarMetro Calgary.

Transport Canada is lining up behind General Motors’ call for an electric vehicle mandate in the United States, just days after the giant automaker unveiled a plan that puts it odds with the Trump administration’s effort to roll back the country’s fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks.

Swedish state electricity company Vattenfall has become the latest source of pressure on Germany to abandon coal-fired electricity generation, ahead of a report this December from a government-appointed commission looking into how and when that transition will take place.

With U.S. midterm elections just five days away, Congressional Democrats are hoping the Trump administration’s relentless rollback of environmental regulations will become a focal point for voters—and quietly planning to target those policies if they gain a majority in the House of Representatives.

Giant automakers General Motors and Honda Motor Co. are joining the pushback against the Trump administration’s bid to unwind vehicle fuel efficiency standards, with GM calling for a national electric vehicle sales program and Honda endorsing steadily tougher mileage standards.

Colossal fossil ExxonMobil stands accused of a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” to deceive investors with “false and misleading assurances” about its financial and business exposure to climate change regulations, in a major lawsuit filed Wednesday by Acting New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood.

More than 200 health professionals from Canada and around the world are calling on the Trudeau government to conduct an independent health assessment of the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, citing key health impacts of climate change that will be made worse by the C$9.3-billion megaproject.

The IPCC’s urgent call for the world’s power utilities to reduce coal consumption 60% by 2030 might look unrealistic through a business-as-usual lens. But it isn’t far off a mounting trend that has only begun to reflect the falling cost and heightened viability of renewable energy, writes Bloomberg News analyst David Fickling.

Veteran environmentalist Steven Guilbeault announced earlier this month that he is stepping down as senior director of Montreal-based Équiterre, the organization he co-founded with Sidney Ribaux in 1993 and helped build into one of Quebec’s most prominent conservation and climate advocacy organizations.

The United States Supreme Court has put a temporary hold on Juliana v. United States, the landmark case that pits 21 youth plaintiffs against the inadequacy of federal climate policy, just 10 days before it was set to go to trial October 29.

A landmark climate lawsuit by 21 youth plaintiffs will go to trial October 29 in Eugene, Oregon, after a U.S. district judge shot down the Trump administration’s latest effort to halt discovery and trial in the case of Juliana v. United States.

Despite the persistent buzz about the Big Three U.S. automakers embracing the electric vehicle revolution, the companies’ performance points to their enduring commitment to gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, an analysis by InsideClimate News reveals.

The National Energy Board’s decision to limit its reassessment of oil tanker traffic from the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to a range of 12 nautical miles from the coast, rather than 200, is raising questions about how seriously the Board is taking the process—and could set the review up for yet another court challenge, according to one of the groups involved in the original legal battle against the project.

Donald Trump’s determined effort to bail out his country’s dying coal industry appears to have “run aground at the White House”, with the plan facing determined opposition from Oval Office advisors, Politico reports.

Opponents of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) through West Virginia keep challenging the project in court. And when they win, state and federal regulators step in and change the rules, as they did in response to a recent court ruling.

Club Med has begun clearcutting a 10.25-hectare forest at the foot of Le Massif ski hill in Quebec’s Charlevoix region, taking down maple trees that had been in the ground for up to two centuries to build a new C$120-million resort that was first announced last year.

An appeal court in The Netherlands put “all world governments on notice” this week, upholding a previous, historic legal order that the national government accelerate its plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Mikisew Cree First Nation in northern Alberta is vowing to carry on the fight, after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against the community’s contention that the federal government has a duty to consult Indigenous people before introducing legislation that could have an impact on their treaty rights.

ExxonMobil is donating US$1 million over two years to Americans for Carbon Dividends, a non-profit founded by former U.S. treasury secretary James Baker III and secretary of state George Shultz that is proposing a $40-per-tonne tax on carbon dioxide.

Last August 30 was not just a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ moment for federal and Alberta politicians pushing to accelerate future tar sands/oil sands expansion plans. It was a morning where the coffee urn figuratively tipped over and bestowed third-degree burns.

Teck Resources Ltd.’s C$20.6-billion tar sands/oil sands megaproject in Alberta is unlikely to be commercially viable, offering “a weak financial case with little chance of remaining a going concern for the 41 years promised in the application,” the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concludes in a report produced for Stand.earth.

A remnant of Germany’s 12,000-year-old Hambach Forest is temporarily safe from clearcutting, after a senior administrative court in Münster ordered utility giant RWE AG to cease operations until judges could decide on a lawsuit brought by BUND, the German branch of Friends of the Earth.

While newly-appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh outraged wide swaths of the American public over allegations that he committed sexual violence in his teens and lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee, his performance as a federal appeals court judge also points to “an extensive record of skepticism toward the government’s powers to act on climate change,” InsideClimate News reports.

Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi announced Wednesday that the Canadian government won’t appeal the late August Federal Court of Appeal ruling that suspended federal approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, and appointed retired Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci to run a new pipeline consultation with Indigenous communities.

With Conservatives blaming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for killing one pipeline, the climate community scorching him for salvaging another one, and his pan-Canadian climate plan bleeding provincial support, a chance at a grand bargain on climate action and fossil fuel production “now appears to have been a typically Liberal attempt to be all things to all people,” CBC journalist Jacques Poitras writes in Policy Options.

Nearly half-way through Donald Trump’s term in the White House, his administration is beginning to focus its relentless penchant for energy deregulation on energy efficiency.

The Trump administration is acknowledging that humanity is on track to increase average global warming by nearly 3.9°C—7.0°F—by the end of this century, and using that calculation to justify its freeze on fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks.

The Doug Ford government in Ontario is sitting on C$1 billion in carbon cap-and-trade revenue, and Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe is warning that it is legally obliged to spend the funds on greenhouse gas reductions.

With United States mid-term elections just 33 days (and 14 hours, 55 minutes) away, citizens across 24 mostly western states have launched 64 separate ballot initiatives to push back on the Trump administration’s determination to gut greenhouse gas regulations and prop up the country’s fossil fuel industries.

West Coast Environmental Law and the Georgia Strait Alliance came up short last week, when 47.8% of local officials at the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) voted to send a climate accountability letter to 20 of the world’s most colossal fossils. But while “we narrowly lost the vote,” writes WCEL staff lawyer Andrew Gage, “I felt surprisingly good about it”.

Elon Musk will step down as chair of Tesla Inc. for at least three years, pay a US$20-million civic penalty, but retain his position as the company’s CEO under a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that is still subject to court approval.

U.S. fossils are pushing back after research found that a common technique used in offshore oil and gas exploration endangers marine food chains by doubling to tripling the death rate of zooplankton at a distance of at least 1.2 kilometres (three-quarters of a mile)—much farther away than past reports have indicated.

Facing a tight, 22-week deadline from the Trudeau government, the National Energy Board (NEB) has kicked off a new round of hearings on the intensely controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and given stakeholders an October 3 deadline—less than a week—to file comments or register to appear at the hearing.

As Hurricane Florence battered the east coast of the United States of America and Super Typhoon Mangkhut hit Philippines and China, an important scientific breakthrough took place.

Public hearings opened in Fort McMurray yesterday for a massive, C$20.6-billion tar sands/oil sands mine proposed by Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd.

The Doug Ford government is on track to reverse reductions in Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) between 2005 and 2016 and throw away the lowest-cost pathways to a sustainable economy, according to the annual report published yesterday by Ontario Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe.

Hundreds of steel fittings currently in use in major Canadian pipelines are at risk of swelling or breaking if they’re put under enough pressure, according to a new National Energy Board report. The NEB says it isn’t concerned that the pipelines are in any immediate danger, even though the fittings fall short of Canadian manufacturing standards.

A U.S. appeals court decision on an Illinois subsidy for nuclear power plants is the latest of several that could help state governments support renewable energy development.

While Houston-based Kinder Morgan made moves to sell off the last of its Canadian assets, federal sources say the Trudeau government—Kinder Morgan’s C$4.5-billion benefactor in the bailout—is considering hiring a retired federal judge to guide a new round of Indigenous consultation in light of last month’s Federal Court of Appeal ruling against the project.

A shady private intelligence firm that “promises to help oil and gas operators mitigate the threat posed by an increasingly sophisticated activist movement”, and has counted Kinder Morgan and the Canadian government among its clients, is the focus of a Mother Jones investigation republished last week by National Observer.

Ecojustice and Greenpeace Canada declared a partial victory Wednesday after the Doug Ford government opened public consultations on its decision to eliminate Ontario’s carbon cap-and-trade plan, just hours after the groups filed suit over the province’s pre-emptive rollback of the Wynne-era program.

Citing the recent death of a killer whale calf as “our canary in a coal mine,” elected officials from a number of Salish Sea communities, both Canadian and American, are pleading with the Trudeau government to withdraw its support for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Even brief exposure to diluted bitumen significantly impairs the development and survival of sockeye salmon eggs, according to a new paper in the journal Aquatic Toxicology.

While the Trump administration prepares to undercut Obama-era controls on methane emissions from oil and gas operations, more than 3,000 U.S, cities, states, businesses, investors, counties, regional associations, faith communities, and post-secondary institutions are on track to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 17%—and possibly by as much as 24%, bringing the country close to meeting its promised target under the Paris Agreement.

Global grid capacity is on track to triple by 2050 as power utilities scramble to accommodate a surge in electric vehicles and new renewable energy capacity, according to a new report by Oslo-based DNV GL.

The Doug Ford government in Ontario is about to land in court, after it cancelled the province’s carbon cap-and-trade system without putting a replacement program in place.

On the same day last week when he told media in Edmonton he would consider legislation to restart the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also warned Albertans not to expect a short-term legislative fix to get the C$13.8-billion project back on track.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet try to patch together a to-do list to salvage the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in light of last week’s Federal Court of Appeal decision, Policy Options is out with a 13-point to-stop list they really ought to consider, drawn up by The Energy Mix publisher Mitchell Beer.

Federal Conservatives are trying to duck responsibility for legislative rollbacks and regulatory decisions during the Stephen Harper years that sowed the seeds for last week’s Federal Court of Appeal decision that at least temporarily halted the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Entrepreneurial enthusiasm—enabled and secured by serious state legislation—is building a strong future for both local and out-of-state solar companies in Illinois.

When the Federal Court of Appeal issued its blockbuster decision last Thursday revoking the Trudeau government’s approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, one of the heroes of the story was someone with no professional opinion on whether the pipeline should be built. In this post, National Observer Managing Editor and investigative ace Mike De Souza details the painstaking research behind some of the biggest revelations on the Trans Mountain file.

In a scathing rebuke of the National Energy Board’s “unjustified failure” to consider oil tanker risks triggered by expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the Federal Court of Appeal voted unanimously yesterday to quash approval of the controversial, C$13.8-billion project.

Hours after a landmark court decision striking down federal approval of the C$13.8-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley announced she was withdrawing her province from the pan-Canadian climate plan “until the federal government gets its act together”.

California legislators voted this week to adopt a 100% carbon-free electricity target for 2045 and accelerate electric vehicle deployment across the state.

With the declared cost of completing the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion up to C$9.3 billion—a $1.9 billion escalation from Kinder Morgan’s previous estimate—it’s time for Ottawa to step away from a project that has been “shrouded in secrecy” and runs counter to the government’s own policy commitments, states an opinion piece published just a day before yesterday’s blockbuster ruling by the Federal Court of Appeals.

The massive, irrefutable harms to human health already being delivered by climate change demand that courts rule beyond the narrow letter of the law when pipeline protesters are up on charges, writes Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment co-founder Warren Bell in an open letter to B.C Supreme Justice Kenneth Affleck, published recently in the National Observer.

Two more Conservative politicians in Canada are working to turn carbon pricing into a winning ballot issue.

The Doug Ford government in Ontario arbitrarily singled out Tesla Canada for harm by excluding the company’s vehicles from a grace period for the phaseout of the province’s electric vehicle subsidy, Superior Court Judge Frederick Myers ruled Monday.

As the federal government unveiled a new consultation paper last week on tailpipe emission controls for light duty vehicles, CBC columnist Don Pittis was pointing to what Canada stands to achieve—and the allies it can expect to gain—if it adheres to its existing standard, rather than aligning with Donald Trump’s efforts to gut the equivalent U.S. regulation.

The city of South Portland, Maine and environmental groups are praising a federal court ruling that a local ordinance banning bulk loading of tar sands/oil sands crude onto coastal tankers does not violate the U.S. constitution.

An Alabama utility’s punitive fees against small-scale solar users who seek to remain connected to the grid are an example of a regulatory climate throughout the economically-depressed southeastern United States that is actively contributing to energy poverty, according to a Grist report recently republished by Resilience.org.

The California Coastal Commission has voted unanimously to force a Laguna Beach couple to tear down a sea wall that protects their mansion, while gradually destroying a nearby public beach.

Canada’s new Impact Assessment Act is facing opposition on two fronts, with two provinces and a pair of Conservative-affiliated senators claiming the measure will harm the country’s economic competitiveness.

The Trump administration’s replacement for President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan will cause up to 1,630 premature deaths, 96,000 more cases of “exacerbated” asthma, 48,000 lost work days, and 140,000 lost school days in 2030, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimate that might understate the impact, according to independent analysts.

With environmental destruction escalating around the world, environmentalists are accelerating conservation efforts through such endeavors as the Nature Needs Half (NNH) movement, and fighting pitched battles to have nature formally recognized as a legal entity with inalienable rights that must be protected.

The Trump White House is about to unveil a replacement for President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that would devolve regulatory decisions to state governments and release dramatically more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But at least one report says the administration’s “fuzzy math” could be the new plan’s undoing.

Career officials within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are disputing the Trump administration claim that rolling back fuel economy standards will reduce the death rate from roadway collisions, according to internal documents released last week.